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POSTS BY MORDECHAI BECK

When Jerusalem's Old City and its eastern neighbourhoods were captured by Israel in 1967, it was obvious, for Israelis at least, that the city would never again be divided. A law was passed by the Knesset "legalising" the unity of the city, although it was never recognised by the rest of the world.

Rosh Hashanah means, literally, the Head of the Year, an idiomatic way of saying in Hebrew the beginning of a new year. The element of doubt in this idiom comes from the fact that the Mishnah devoted to Rosh Hashanah identifies four “heads of the year”.

On a number of occasions in the Torah, the festival of Passover, Chag Hapesach is called Chag Hamatzot, the Feast of Unleavened Bread (eg Exodus 34:18; Leviticus 23:6, Deuteronomy 16:17). Pesach becomes transformed into korban pesach, an everlasting memory of that first night of freedom.

The question on the lips of most Israelis these days is: "Who are you voting for?" Unlike previous elections, the answer is not a foregone conclusion. Many are asking, in fact, whether it's worthwhile marking the holiday which traditionally accompanies elections in Israel with a vote at all. What, they are asking, are we voting for?

Chanucah, the festival of lights, is, in our own day, mainly the commemoration of a spiritual event. Its historical roots, however, as set out in the Book of Maccabees, were the celebration of a great military victory over the Syrian-Greek overlords.

The Talmud's description concentrates on the laws of keeping the Chanucah lights burning (Masechet Shabbat 21b-24a).

This summer, Tel Aviv witnessed some live theatre in the shape of a major demonstration against the cost of living in Israel's chief urban centre. How ironic that most of the uproar took place on Rothschild Boulevard, directly down the road from the largest cultural project of the last decade - the renovated Habima National Theatre complex.

Israel's Foreign Office recently revealed that, since March of this year, foreign dignitaries have no longer been taken to Herzl's grave as part of their official visit. The reason cited was lack of time.

Further evidence of a Charedi intrusion into mainstream Israeli life emerged last week when "Superdox" members of Jerusalem's city council proposed a ban on the capital's forthcoming opera festival, scheduled for next month.

The dramatic telling of the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt is interrupted by a seemingly unrelated command, to follow a new calendar: "God said to Moses and to Aaron, 'This month shall be for you the first month – the premier one among all the months of the year'"(Exodus 12: 1-2).

Shoshana Chen is a charedi grandmother, living in Israel. She recently wrote an open letter to her grandchildren in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. In it, she expressed her difficulty in understanding why these grandchildren were the subject of such hatred by much of the Israeli population, "not only because you were born Jewish, but also because you were born charedim". What is really surprising about this is that Mrs Chen was surprised.

It is highly unusual, to say the least, for a rabbi in today's Israel to be a hero, not just among the religious crowd, but also among a secular population increasingly alienated from, if not indeed antagonistic towards, the rabbinical establishment and all it represents. Rabbi Haim Amsellem is such a man. For many Israelis, he is a whistle- (or maybe shofar-) blower, warning of the extremism that is fast becoming the norm of Israel's religious life.

Just recently, the so-called "hill youth" - an extreme and violent posse of youngsters who appropriate empty hillocks throughout Judea and Samaria for the purpose of illegal settlement - issued a list of curses for their members to use as the need arises. When attacked by border policemen, they now have precise formulations by which to fend off the foe - in the same way Harry Potter might ward off Muggles or other dark powers with his magic wand.

The haftarah for Shemini Atzeret in the diaspora recalls the ceremony mounted by King Solomon for the inauguration of the First Temple. In this it provides a fitting climax to the careers not only of Solomon but also of his father, King David, who, in the parallel text in the Book of Chronicles, planned and devised almost every detail of its complex architecture. The amount of words lavished on the building's design in both sources only emphasises its supreme importance in the annals of ancient Israel's history.